


That Moon Song

by CasualDanger



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Gen, Midna (mentioned), POV Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Post-Breath of the Wild, Retrospective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 13:13:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17060426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasualDanger/pseuds/CasualDanger
Summary: Title from "That Moon Song" by Gregory Alan IsakovBasically my ramblings after Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild."It's not so simple -- sleeping -- for either of them anymore, or maybe it was always that dismal . . ."





	That Moon Song

It’s not so simple – sleeping – for either of them anymore, or maybe it always had been that dismal, another task at the end of the day, another fight. Link, after this particular Ganon gone, felt a bone-deep weariness, but that had been with him since his waking without a name. He barely returned to sleep, dozing even upright by campfires to stop himself from succumbing fully.

Zelda felt something similar in herself – she held both an idea that she had been awake in some dimension for a hundred years, but a piece of her, her heart maybe, had been asleep and withdrawn for just as long. It was the guilt of it, truly, that kept her awake: her father gone, the Champions gone, an entire generation of Hylians grown in the shadow of madness and subjected to its monstrous tendrils, all because when she waded into that spring, she felt only its chill, no enlightenment to speak of.

Now, at the end of this fight and _only_ this fight, she knows that for them there was no other way. In her long years locked away, she had seen fragments of their before and their soon-to-be, so many Zeldas and Links, so many unnamed boys with pointed ears and an affinity for defending blonde-haired girls with power thrumming through their veins. And how can one sleep when they’ve seen all these possibilities, all these realities, that followed each other one after another just as the two of them have done? She can’t help but notice: she never seemed very happy. Neither had he.

In the mornings, when they’ve tired of trying to sleep, they survey that land they’ve lost and saved a thousand times before. Ganon has left behind monsters in his wake, and though they are strong the duo takes solace that the blood moons are over. At least for now, when the Lynels melt away, they are gone for good. The people are less confident about it, about her, but when they see their soldier, they trust him enough to believe in her.

She finds that sometimes, she doesn’t want that belief, never really had in this long life – not her longest, but maybe her most disjointed. When she was younger, she wanted to be a scientist. Now, she only wants peace. She finds herself saying, “At the end,” “In the end,” “Ultimately,” but not really knowing what that very well means.

There is an image in her mind of another life, of a gloriously beautiful woman with skin the color of rough waters, staring past her form to a man bloodied but whole behind her. She remembers the moment she realized that she actually hoped he would get an ending, maybe with Midna, maybe with any number of the people he’d met in any number of the lives he’d half-lived. Maybe, selfishly, with any number of princesses who’d sacrificed for him as he sacrificed for them.

But there would be no end, not really. No sleep for Time’s soldiers; just a couple of monsters themselves, skulking through the night, staring up in wretched acceptance at a blood red moon.


End file.
